George Remus

George Remus (14 November 1874-20 January 1952) was a German-American bootlegger and lawyer during Prohibition.

Biography
George Remus was born on 14 November 1874 in Berlin, German Empire, and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois in the United States before he was even five years old. Remus worked at his uncle's pharmacy before buying it in 1895, and he became a lawyer in 1898 after tiring of the pharmacy business. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1904, becoming a famous criminal defense lawyer with a yearly salary of $50,000 ($625,727 in 2016). Remus saw that his criminal clients were becoming wealthy from bootlegging at the start of Prohibition in 1920, so he decided to join them and become a bootlegger himself. Remus moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where 80% of America's bonded whiskey was located, and he had his own men hijack his government-licensed medical liquor so that he could sell the liquor illegally; he memorized the Volstead Act and exploited its loopholes. In 1925, he was sentenced to two years in prison for bootlegging, and undercover Bureau of Prohibition agent Franklin Dodge cheated with Remus' wife and conspired to have him deported or killed. Remus killed his wife after she divorced him, as she was complicit with Dodge's schemes. He was acquitted after pleading insanity, and he died in Covington, Kentucky in 1952 at the age of 77.